your kingdom is crumbling, you're a tragedy
by Lady Shaye
Summary: We were the kings and queens of promise, maybe the victims of ourselves. / She doesn't know how to help him, except to kiss him.


Rating: T

Pairing: Daroline, some angsty Delena, Stelena, Forwood

Disclaimer: Julie Plec. Also, if I owned, my desktop would be full of shirtless pictures of Ian Somerhalder. Oh...wait. Um. There would be *more* pictures of shirtless Ian Somerhalder. And Daroline would be canon.

Summary: We were the kings and queens of promise, maybe the victims of ourselves. / She doesn't know how to help him, except to kiss him.

* * *

A/N: So, um, basically every little angsty bit of Daroline I could throw together with a slapstick happy ending hardly even related at all. Possibly a sequel, not quite likely. I am giving you nothing to look forward to, am I? Oh, well, you're still reading. So you must just be masochistic or something.

BTW, I threw this in an email to _thewasabipea_, but she hasn't responded (I don't blame her in the least, this thing is terrible) and I wanted to post this anyway to get it off my chest. Also, darling, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I even sent this to you. It's horrible.

ALSO, NOT SORRY AT ALL THAT I WROTE/POSTED THIS. (Mostly because I love Daroline, but also because you're the one reading this.) I am so tired of apologizing to people about who I am or what I do or what I write, so, not even gonna try. Just, I hope you enjoy.

If you like it, THANK YOU. If you don't, THANK YOU ANYWAY.

Also, summary quote is from 30 seconds to mars, _kings and queens._

* * *

_your kingdom is crumbling, you're a tragedy_

-White Tie Affair, "Candle (Sick and Tired)"

* * *

Caroline Forbes builds herself her own little perfect world when she is a child.

She brings home drawings of pretty glittering glass castles on beaches surrounded by mysterious mountains and thick mist and beautiful, sparkling, impossibly blue waves. They are covered in stars and comments from her kindergarten, first grade, second grade art teachers, with a red pen smiley face more often than not.

"_What a beautiful eye for art._"

"_Caroline truly has a gift._"

"_The goal today was 'paradise.' I think Caroline got it in one._"

"_…can she come up with something a little more original? Anything new? She seems to be fixating._"

But Caroline Forbes knows her own version of perfection. She picks a dream and sticks to it. She's gonna move into a gorgeous castle by the sea with her handsome prince charming, and she and Elena will be friends _forever_, and she will never grow old.

Her mother sighs at her daughter's unrealistic expectations, and her father twists his ring anxiously as he shoves papers toward his soon-to-be ex-wife.

And Caroline blissfully dreams on, unaware.

* * *

Her castle starts to crumble to bits when her father makes her meet Steven's daughter. They should bond, really, both being in the same situation, but they don't. In fact, it just seems to make them even more unsuited for friendship. They just react too differently to it.

And it starts to get even harder to dream when her first prince charming—sweet and innocent and _Matt_—falls for Elena. And her second, a cold and manipulative monster, does too. The more evil Salvatore brother—or at least she thinks he's evil.

Her castle breaks in half, shattering completely into shards of glass, when she wakes up without a heartbeat.

Only one thing from her dreams comes true after that, for a long while.

She will still never grow old.

But there's no one to grow old _with_.

* * *

Tyler is sweet and mostly dependable and has a hidden softness to him that you would not expect. He curls up in bed with her and calls her just as she starts to get lonely (_he's psychic like that_, he teases her) and (for the most part) keeps his teeth away from her carefully. He becomes her pretty dark forbidden (but since when has she _ever_ listened to Damon, as a vampire?) prince.

She really loves him. He's just enough for her, not more (like Damon) or less (like Matt).

And so she cries when somehow or other he ends up dead. She didn't pay enough attention, didn't protect him, didn't _save him_ from the Originals. And it would have been unconventional for her to save her Prince Charming, but she _so_ would have done it for him a million times.

So she cries. And doesn't stop, not at Bonnie's comforting touch or Damon's odd unfamiliar one (and why is he holding her, hell hasn't frozen over yet) or the feel of Stefan guiding her to a bed.

She knows they've won.

But she can't find the emotion to care.

* * *

It's a week before she can pull herself together enough to get out of the Salvatore's one-in-a-million guest bed. And it's really only because Damon forces her to get up.

"Look, if I have to make you, I will," he says. "You're going. You'll regret it forever if you don't."

He looks like he knows from experience, though she can tell he's trying not to look so sad. (She's seen his vulnerable tells before, and a pillow to her face means she can now remember every sign of his that he's sad or angry. He's definitely not trying hard enough this time, but as usual, she won't say anything. Let him feel badass around at least one person these days, why not let him.)

She gets up out of the silky bed and showers for five minutes in the bedroom's adjoining bathroom. She comes back in and puts on the plain black sleeveless dress that Elena put on her nightstand earlier this morning, not really expecting her to wear it. (She could tell by the defeat in Elena's voice as she tried to make cheerful one-sided small talk.) Damon looks shocked that it only took a few partly-harsh words from him to get her going.

It takes five minutes to put on dark eyeliner, thick black mascara, and dark lipstick. She pulls her hair up into a messy bun, a few curled tresses escaping and hanging, framing her face, and her soft, light fragrance floats across the room as she sprays her perfume. (Elena unpacked everything of Caroline's three days ago, though it's remained untouched until now.) Standing near the bedroom door, he catches the scent. It lingers in his memory. Vanilla and lime and cinnamon; she hasn't changed her odd combination yet. Even after all this time. (He remembers tasting it for the first time on his tongue; kissing her and compelling her and hurting her. And she still hasn't changed it.)

"Let's go," she says emotionlessly after she pulls on her strapped high-heeled sandals and looks him straight in the eye.

* * *

They reach the funeral and he has his arm around her. (He normally wouldn't try to console _anyone_ so much, except her wordless blank expression and the fact that she doesn't even _react_ in any way to his touch kind of worries him.) She should at least try to push him off or something, but she doesn't. She doesn't do the normal Caroline thing and chat excessively when feeling…well, _anything_.

It's only when she doesn't cry throughout the whole ceremony that he realizes that she's flipped the switch off.

She can't feel anything. Love, pain, anger, overwhelming sadness.

Nothing.

He remembers the way she spent days crying in his bed (maybe she thinks it's a guestroom and he won't tell her differently) with her arms crossed around her ankles and her face buried in her knees, sobbing pathetically like a mewling little exhausted kitten. Refusing blood and food and pills, or anything that might make her feel marginally better. Because he knows that she thinks she doesn't deserve to feel okay. Because he knows that she thinks she should've saved Tyler. Even when she couldn't have done so—and there was no way of saving Tyler, or he'd have saved her all this heartbreak and done it himself, for her—she still feels that she should have found a way.

He remembers her pain and suffering, when she didn't know that he was outside his doorway watching her weep.

And he doesn't blame her for turning it off, not at all.

* * *

All it really takes to get her to turn it back on is one night. (And it's mostly intentional, on his part, just because he knows that the sooner she begins to feel again, the sooner she will eventually heal—and in his opinion, she's been spending far too much time stealing his bourbon stash and staring blankly at his favorite Persian rug as though her gaze could burn holes in it. And he's maybe-sort-of afraid that one day she'll find out a way to do so, and, damn, he loves that rug.)

She's sitting by the Salvatore's living room fireplace (she can't go home just yet, to her mother's attempts to be supportive and understand and _kind_, she's too afraid of being understood right now) and his hand brushes her knee and she jumps, slightly. She's much more sensitive to the physical now that she isn't tuned in to the emotional anymore. Much like the blinded getting better hearing, she guesses, but she doesn't think of her decision all that often now. She can't feel, she _won't_ feel—and that's that.

She has a strange thought that if she could feel even just one thing right now, it wouldn't be sadness or anger or pain.

It would be fear. (She'd be scared of herself.)

She eyes Damon steadily as he sits next to her. He plays with the tumbler of bourbon between his legs. "Two months," he mentions abruptly, as if it means nothing to him at all. Like it's casual conversation.

So much happened two months ago.

"What?" she asks warily.

"Well…" he sighs, like he's being pressed for information, as if he didn't bring it up in the first place. "Honestly? Since you became an emotionless immortal with no future and no humanity left." He's blunt and she doesn't—can't—care.

If she could feel anger she knows that she'd be pouncing on him, knocking his glass of his hands, and clawing at his eyes as she yelled.

"Okay," she shrugs, toneless and motionless.

He shrugs back. "Just thought you'd like to know. Didn't think you'd been keeping track."

"I haven't been."

"Okay." And he casually reaches for his iPod. He hits several buttons in a row and she listens as classical, rock, and soft piano music come on. An hour like this they spend as they sit in silence, savoring the music.

Then a change, to something that she can't believe. Why would he even have this song?

_Their_ song—hers and Tyler's.

Coldplay sings about love and tears and light and salvation, and her hands start to shake faintly. But she ignores it. She shouldn't be able to feel regret. She shouldn't be able to know pain, or anger, or overwhelming sadness. She shouldn't feel tears in her eyes as she bites her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

But she does.

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the song—_too in love to let it go_—she feels some sort of inner dam break. Water—or maybe the blood she's been refusing for weeks—rushes past her ears and into her eyes.

She tries to hold it back as the emotion comes bursting out of her.

But Damon must notice it, must see it—although she makes sure to hide the side of her face that he should be able to see with a curtain of thick blonde hair—because he just calmly, wordlessly gathers her in his arms.

She bites her lip, ends up crying into his shoulder. Even though there's no blood smeared across her face, it reminds her of a similar situation as he shushes her and runs fingers through her hair and rubs her shoulders and back as she buries herself into his t-shirt and skin and familiar comforting smell of soap and blood and bourbon. She tells herself to ignore that reminiscent feeling.

(But she still finds herself looking over her shoulder quickly for a stake—just once. And there isn't one there that she can see through the blur of tears. So maybe she can trust him, trust _someone_, just this once. Just one time.)

She slips her lapis lazuli ring off of her finger, lets it clatter on the couch. She'll let herself burn in the morning.

He catches it as it bounces and slips it back on.

She just keeps crying, the sound of the iPod like an instrumental to her breakdown.

"_What a lovely way to burn_," it whispers, and she wishes Damon hadn't put her ring back on her when she'd clearly taken it off for a reason. She thinks about taking it off again, but it's not worth finishing the thought over.

* * *

Morning comes all too soon, and she's asleep on his lap, facedown so he can't see the redness gone from the skin around her eyes, head resting on his thigh, hair pillowed outwards like a blonde rainbow or curtain on the couch.

He runs his hand through her hair as she stirs, breath still hitching slightly in her sleep.

He's never felt such pity before. But then again, he's never seen someone in such bittersweet, agonized, all-consuming pain before.

* * *

She wakes up disoriented, calls him Tyler by mistake, and curls further into his arms, still half-asleep as he tells her to keep resting, hush, Barbie, keep dreaming. It's not even dawn yet.

"Shh," he whispers, his lips resting on the crown of her head just barely, dragging his fingers through her hair again.

"Tyler," she mumbles back, mostly contented for now, and she rests again, dreaming of half-there nightmares.

She dreams of blood and Tyler's lips on her neck and Klaus's evil grin and Damon's hands: on her back, holding a stake, kissing her, biting her, hurting her, pleasuring her, grabbing her by the wrists and pouncing on her, petting her hair, pushing her out of the way of a werewolf's bite, telling her with a stab of his forefinger to get a new boyfriend, comforting her, touching her. (That last part is the most soothing thing in the world, by the way.)

_Is she a) stupid, b) useless, c) masochistic, d) a dreamer, e) halfway in love, or f) all of the above?_

* * *

The sun rises completely and he superglues her ring to her finger as she continues sleeping. She could easily break it by snapping the dried glue off and slipping the stone back off of her hand.

But he hopes that maybe it will prove a point to her and keep her from doing this to herself.

When she wakes up again, he's gone.

And maybe that's a good thing. She doesn't think she could deal with him right now. If she sees him, she'll probably just start crying again. She doesn't think she can handle any more tears coming out of her body at the moment.

Not for another hour, at least.

* * *

They pretend like nothing ever happened.

That's what they've always done.

* * *

Elena chooses. And they've all been holding their breath for this since the beginning, since her and Damon's first kiss, since he compelled the memory that he loved her away, since _she_ kissed _him_, since he admitted that he missed his humanity, since she admitted that a part of her loved him too.

She picks Stefan.

It's like being on the goddamned _Bachelorette_ show. (And he only knows this because Barbie has a strange addiction to that show and sometimes he'll catch bits and pieces of it before he throws her out of the boardinghouse to go "watch her lame reality television somewhere else.")

"I'm so sorry, Damon," Elena says.

And Caroline watches something in him crack. It doesn't show in his face, or his words, or even his knee-jerk reaction: sarcasm. It's in his body language. His shoulders tighten, muscles stiffening just the slightest bit. His knees lock. His fingers curl the tiniest amount, knuckles whitening. Every bit of him tenses to just the smallest extent.

And she feels sorry for him.

After his anticipated mocking and cynical comment that she doesn't even pay attention to because she's so focused on _him_, he acknowledges no one as he stalks out of the room (and somehow he can still be graceful in this heartache, and she wonders how) and Elena presses her lips together but doesn't call him back. Stefan looks sad as he watches his brother leave the boardinghouse, but he puts his hand in Elena's nevertheless and they both tentatively smile at each other, rekindling their old romance that seems to never die completely.

And sure, she thinks Stefan and Elena belong together, but still. Poor Damon.

(Probably the only time that those two words belong together in even the same sentence—or maybe it's all the time and she just never figured that out until now.)

* * *

She finds him in the ruins of the old Salvatore house, the place where she and Stefan accidentally stumbled upon once, hunting for bunnies. He'd laughed it off at the time, but she'd noticed the way his gaze lingered on it longingly even as they moved on for their prey. She figures maybe Damon has just as much of a connection with it, and she's right.

He's slumped up against a tree, staring hard and cold at the ground stretched out before him, and she moves through the maze of trees until she's standing behind him, just barely able to see the outline of him past the old oak tree blocking the two of them. He must know that she's there, though—because Damon always knows about everything, doesn't he? (Everything except how to find a woman who will love only him.)

"I chased Katherine right here," he says distantly, as though he's talking to himself more than her, which he probably is. She lets him keep going. "I remember. She was wearing that big dress and she was laughing and carrying a football and I caught her by the waist and I thought she loved me." His words are running together without breaks or room for breathing and they sound slightly mad. _He_ sounds slightly mad. And that scares her, probably more than it should because it's Damon, right? And she should hate him but she doesn't.

"Sometimes we're wrong," she tells him, trying to remain calm and sound strong, but he acts as though he doesn't hear her (maybe he can't) and continues incoherently muttering.

"She acted like she did. I mean, I know she compelled me away when I annoyed her, and I know that she tempted me into drinking her blood, and I know that she loved Stefan too but _why didn't she love me_?" and he's panting, and it's just like that time when he had Tyler's bite in his bloodstream and he was so feverish that he couldn't stop gasping (and she watched from far away but didn't feel close enough or comfortable enough to try to ease him like Elena tried to do). Like he's been running and human, like he's not a vampire. Like he's about to hyperventilate.

Like her, in his arms, about a week ago, whispering _Tyler_ into his neck.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs because she has no other answer (there _is_ no other answer), and the next thing she knows, he's standing upright directly in front of her, stumbling initially like he's dizzy, facing her, and his eyes are blank and empty but she senses the aching hurt behind the stoniness of those cobalt midnight blues.

Her hand reaches up of its own accord. It finds his shoulder and moves up, meeting the warmness of his neck and throat and fingering the firmness of his jaw. Next she cups his cheek in her palm and his eyes close, but more in defeat (who, or what, is he fighting? Comfort? Grief? Reality?) than relief, and she strokes the skin around the outside edge of his closed left eye. She moves down to his mouth and traces her thumb over his lower lip, tight and bitten almost bloody and white with anger and sadness. He opens his eyes slowly, as if shocked by her tender touch, and studies her: her casual curled blonde hair, her blue long-sleeved shirt (it's winter, and if he were human he'd been freezing now, _oh God he wishes he were human_), her dark blue jeans, her black ballet slippers that sparkle, her dark eye makeup that swirls like an Egyptian's, her light pink lip gloss, her warm calming touch, her pale skin that seems to stand out in the darkness of the woods at dusk.

She replaces her thumb with her lips, hesitantly kissing the left edge of his mouth, carefully, expecting some sort of resistance, which he doesn't offer. (He also doesn't kiss her back, but whatever she can take she will.) She pulls back just as tentatively, waiting for him to make his expected sarcastic remark, but he doesn't, he just looks at her like she's some sort of salvation to him. (She's never been that to anybody before, never been that important.) Then he looks away, his gaze empty and glazed over and drifting, listlessly staring at the trees beyond them.

"I really thought she loved me enough to care what happened to me," he just whispers, and he's not looking her in the eyes and he seems dazed. He's still talking more to himself and maybe God (does he even believe in God anymore, she doesn't know) and the universe than her, and she can't tell if he's talking about Katherine leaving him and never caring or Elena not following him out of the house and seeing if he was okay.

And she doesn't know how to help him, except to kiss him again, this time all the way on the lips.

* * *

He kisses back this time, French and hot and heavy, shoving her up against the tree he was collapsed up against only a few moments ago, and she remembers this sensation, faintly, through human eyes and lips and ears, sensitive skin and memories. She lets him.

Then his fingers are gripping her upper arms and he has over a hundred and fifty years of strength on her but he's being strangely gentle with her, only holding her so hard that it just _barely_ hurts. The pain is ignorable, so she leaves it alone and continues kissing him. He still tastes the same, and moves the same, but his lips seem to be maneuvering for thinner lips, and his face is tilted for a slightly different-shaped nose, and he cups her cheek wrong.

Is this how he was positioned when he kissed Elena, and Katherine?

She ignores it, because maybe this is what he needs, and God knows she'll never deny a few makeout sessions with Damon Salvatore (the man is practically a kissing god, for heaven's sakes, just don't tell his ego that or it'll explode) so maybe she wants it too (who is she kidding, of course she wants it). They keep on with their distraction. And somehow they end up in his bedroom, having sex, and she hopes that Elena and Stefan are out of the house. Desperately prays for it. (He's probably hoping for exactly the opposite, probably wanting Elena to know what he's doing to get over her, probably wishing that Elena will get jealous and run back to him as she's been prone to do these past few years with alternatively him or Stefan.)

When he falls asleep, holding her in his octopus, tentacle-like embrace (she remembers it well from her human days, compelled into forgetting it and all other "weaknesses" then), she doesn't nudge her way out of the position. Mostly it's just because he's warm.

(But it's also because nobody's held her like this since Tyler, and three months is a long time to go without feeling loved, quite honestly, from her viewpoint. And maybe she misses the thought of having a prince to wake up to, even if Damon's the dark knight in glittery black armor, pushing everybody away and never letting anybody save him.)

* * *

She wakes up first, having only slept for about four hours, and gently disentangles herself from the grip he's got her in. She dresses quickly and slips out of the boardinghouse door (thank God, the twosome don't appear to be home and maybe they weren't for the entire time? God, she hopes so) and runs back to her house so she can change clothes. She feels dirty, with unwashed hair and day-old makeup (though she wears very little anymore) and the same top and jeans from before. Not to mention, she thinks that maybe she put her bra on inside out in her rush to get out of the room before Damon woke up.

(Sure, he's adorable when he's sleeping with his hair mussed and arm tightened around a pillow and vulnerable, but he's damn annoying when he's awake and talking. She doesn't trust him not to pretend to bounce back from Elena's rejection as soon as he opens his eyes, and his cynicism can wait for a couple of hours. Let her keep this soft version of him in her head for a while, it's different from her human memories where there was her blood on the pillow he was clutching in sleep, and it's kind of enlightening.)

Liz doesn't ask her where she's been—her absence during the night has happened often enough now that Liz knows not to ask, and besides, she's rarely been around Liz since Tyler… Anyway. She almost never comes home, is the point. Even if she has (is _healed_ a good word?) begun to get better in the three months since Tyler's death, this home still reminds her too much of Tyler's knocking or his impromptu kissing or him holding her in the aftermath of some nameless traumatic thing. It reminds her of him, period.

They just sit wordlessly at the kitchen table and eat breakfast together; it's a routine now, whenever it so seldom happens, for them to not say a word. Caroline then exits the house and goes to the Grille. She's been waiting for answers to her college applications for a while now, but she ought to get them any day now.

Damon is there, stirring a glass of bourbon and speaking tonelessly to the bartender. But she doesn't approach him. Mostly because she doesn't know what to say.

* * *

She watches him as he grieves and broods in alcohol and girls and silence. She doesn't comment on the scent of blood that lingers in the boardinghouse now because Stefan is too…nervous to tell Damon to stop. And Elena is too worried that Damon will either kiss her or bite her head off.

Caroline says nothing because she is too sick of watching Damon stare at her with those cold angry eyes (like he's forgotten how she consoled him) whenever she tries to talk him out of this…stage or whatever it is. So if he has to bite into some poor girl's neck in order to close them and gain something resembling minor relief, then so be it. Let her be a hypocrite, or an allower of abuse, but as long as he doesn't kill this girl, let it happen. Let him take another Caroline, another Andie, another nameless blood/sex toy.

If it makes him stop looking so goddamn empty, she won't say anything. For now. Because God damn her, she might just love him a little bit.

* * *

Three months is long enough. It's almost over—she's leaving for college in a day, and she better impart some lasting wisdom on these dumbasses before she leaves them behind for four years. (None of them are going off to college except Elena and Bonnie—Bonnie, who's going off to New York, and Elena, who's staying local to be with Stefan.)

Elena is probably easiest. "Just be yourself," she encourages her, and advises, "and don't attract any more ancient vamps, 'kay? I don't think we can last another one. Also, don't get torn between the brothers again. I get that they're both hot and all that, but seriously. Stay with what you're chosen. Stefan is your forever now, basically, so you'd better not go off exchanging innuendos and cooking with Damon again."

Elena just nods once, a bit slack-jawed.

Stefan is…a tiny bit harder. "Quit being afraid of loving or caring about your brother, and of showing it," she tells him in no uncertain terms. "And don't be afraid of him. You're not his bitch, okay? Don't let him treat you like you are. Besides, you're brothers. Don't get torn apart by something as simple as a girl. Look, I get Elena's your soulmate and all," she cuts him off, "but you seriously need to get your act together, both of you. A hundred and fifty years and then some of torturing each other or ignoring each other? Bad brotherly love vibe going on there. Fix it. Make him fix it, too."

Giving some final advice to Bonnie is somewhere in-between, mostly because Bonnie is human and she's scared. She knows how dangerous big cities like New York can sometimes be. "Be careful," she says. "Keep this vial of my blood on hand, okay? In case you get in a…an accident. All right?"

Bonnie agrees and takes the vial, but it takes some twisting of her arm to get her to do so. A final hug, an exchange of I love yous, and a goodbye, and she's almost ready to go.

Gathering up her remaining courage, she heads off to find Damon.

She finds him in the Grille, where he is usually to be found these days, and confronts him. In perhaps the stupidest way possible, but also the most effective.

She steals his bourbon.

"What the hell?" he asks her tiredly, with absolutely no fight in it. "That's mine."

"Yeah, I know. But I don't care." She slides it off to the side on the table of the bar. "You've got to stop this, Damon. You've gotta stop pretending that this is like a fairytale and she'll magically come, choosing you. You need to quit acting like Ty—like Elena's coming back." Her dead boyfriend's name partly slips past her lips before she can stop it, but she surges ahead with her point, avoiding the ache that still lingers sometimes in her chest. "Get your life together, Damon. Become friends with Stefan again. Try to detach yourself from Elena. Make friends. Start a new life. It can be here in Mystic Falls if you want, though that's kinda just asking for this to start all over again, because some new trouble's gonna come up and we'll all get caught up in this cycle all over again, except me and Bonnie 'cause we're leaving. But I would suggest starting somewhere new, if you can."

He quirks an eyebrow at the half-mention of Tyler—she's refused to talk about him until now, a widely known fact that Elena and Bonnie won't stop whispering to each other about when they think she's not listening, but they keep forgetting about vampire hearing—but says nothing until she finishes. He tilts his head and replies, "Kinda hypocritical, don't you think? You being all caught up with the memory of Lockwood and everything."

"No," she says, truthfully. "No, I was. I was when he was alive. And I loved him after he was dead, and maybe I still do most of the time, but here's the thing: he is _never_ coming back. And I get that. Don't you think that I get that? Why else would I have shut my emotions off? I know that he's never coming back, just like Elena's never coming for you, and I've accepted that. It hurts, but I have. And it's not being hypocritical. It's taking my own advice. I'm leaving Mystic Falls. I don't know if I'm coming back anytime soon, but I do know that I am going to begin a new life with or without this place, either with your approval or not. I'll see Liz and Bonnie and Elena and Stefan sometimes, but my life here is nearly over."

"What about me?" he smirks. Or tries to. His smirks have kind of become depressing and tired lately. "Would you visit me?"

"As far as I'm concerned, you come along with the Stefan package," she says, trying to wonder why he cares. "An eternity of misery and all that, kind of entails that you'll follow him around forever. But I'm really hoping you'll change that and get over this stupid feuding nonsense, and I'll have a reason to visit you separately instead of just hoping you'll be there."

Damon puts his lips together in a firm line. He relents, however. "Maybe someday," he mutters out of the corner of his mouth, but that's enough for her.

She beams. "One day, you'll know that I'm right. New life, Damon. That's our goal, okay? Please?"

Why does she even _care_?

"Because you helped me with—with Tyler," she swallows. "And because you let me help you with Elena. And because you _were_ sweet sometimes. Remember I said that. _Twice_. Okay? Goodbye, Damon."

Dammit. He said that out loud?

She just gives him a questioning, interested look—as if interested in what he will decide, what he will become, and what part he will let her have in it and in his life—and walks away. He doesn't even say goodbye, lost in his thoughts.

* * *

He corners her in her room just as she leaves Liz's house for the taxi. She's dragging along two suitcases and shouldering five more on her back thanks to vampire super-strength. "Seven suitcases?" he asks dryly. "Really? You needed _seven_?"

"Hell yes," she retorts, not looking the least bit surprised by his appearance though inside she's rattled just the tiniest bit. "This isn't even all of my stuff."

He regards them with distaste. "These things aren't little, you know. Need help carrying them?"

"Nope. I'm a vampire, Damon. Forget?"

"Couldn't forget that," he says a little quieter than usual.

"Yup," she says too cheerfully. "Otherwise you'd have killed me by now."

He snorts. "I have a hundred and fifty years on you. I could kill you anyway, right now if I wanted."

"No you can't. We've gone head to head two or three times already, and I've kicked your ass well enough each time. I could make it on my own."

"First time you didn't let me have a chance, just threw me down a hallway and exhibited your unusual, finely honed talent to bitch." The words aren't unkind or sarcastic, just _Damon_, and what's to be expected from him. "And I know fights are never fair, but if I decided to kill you, I wouldn't give you a chance either. Second time, if you hadn't run off with your daddy, I'd have taken you down, little girl." He flashes a grin. "But…mostly…" he loses that cockiness, drops his head down just the tiniest amount. "I guess I wouldn't have killed you, despite the fact that you're so damn annoying, but not because you're a vampire. But because you've been helping me out. You've helped me to make a decision. And I have, and I think that it's the best one I could have made."

She has a look of excitement about her that, as far as he is concerned, should never ever be involved with him. No one's ever been this excited for him before. "You're leaving Mystic Falls?"

"Yeah."

She looks like she's struggling not to hug him or something. So he backs off quickly, adding, "I thought it might do me some good to get out of here. Dunno if I'll ever come back, but it'll be when I get over Elena fully."

Caroline smiles widely, teeth exposed. "I think that's the best idea you've ever had."

"Me too," he says, looking down at the ground with his hand rubbing the back of his neck, looking for all the world like the situation couldn't get more awkward. "I'll, um…I'll go get the rest of your bags. I assume they're, uh, in your bedroom. Um. Right." With a flash, he's gone, and back a few seconds later toting four more bags, one of them a large duffel slung across one shoulder. "Well," he says, smiling as brightly and falsely as she's ever seen, pretending as though the few seconds he's been gone have defused the tension between them and he's transformed into someone who can actually _express_ his happiness, "let's go, then."

"What do you mean?" For the life of her, sometimes she just can't understand him.

"Oh." He smiles, and on any other person it would look nervous, but on him it just looks kind and full of new beginnings, and it's not fake anymore, just real and hers. "Did I forget to mention? I'm coming with you to…oh, I forget which college it is. I just know I'll compel my way in when we get there. And don't worry, I'll pay them plenty; enough that they're recompensed for their minds being controlled."

She almost smiles, still trying to process it. But that's enough for him, to see her lips twitch faintly upward and her eyes brighten and her hand jerk in the direction of his before she thinks better of it and decides to give him time. "Well," she finally says. "Taxi's waiting."

He takes her arm like any nineteenth-century gentleman would do, and she laughs loudly but lets him lead her to the taxi, and it's sappy and completely totally not _them_ but it somehow is because weren't they always full of paradoxes around each other, and weren't they always incomprehensible to anyone but themselves, and wasn't he sometimes sweet to her?

He still is, sometimes.

* * *

It's been four years and Mystic Falls has hardly changed at all.

They're holding hands when they approach the boardinghouse, and he opens the door for her. "My white knight," she teases, and he just grins and doesn't comment. "Oh my God, _look_ at this place. It's hardly changed." She runs a hand up and down the staircase banister, shocked.

"It was like this for a hundred and fifty years," he reminds her. "Four years wasn't gonna do anything much to it. Besides, you know Stefan. He likes to keep things the same."

She grins, openmouthed and wide-eyed, and he reflects on how much she's changed him, helped him, bettered him. She's made him better.

"Look at our castle," she grins. "I always wanted a castle of my own. And now I get a knight to go with it." True, it's not how she pictured her kingdom, but it's better than nothing. And she's content with this, with him.

He smiles, holds her hand tighter, presses a hard kiss to her mouth, and they set off to explore this castle that they've known for so long, but only just now have begun occupying together. King and queen, knight and lover, vampire and vampire. Lover and lover.

Their kingdom is just beginning, but it is strong.

* * *

A/N: Oh, good Lord. I went saptastic on that, didn't I? Oh, well. If you're this far down then you've read it so you obviously either have to finish everything (like me) or you actually like it (unlike me) or you want to leave a review detailing why exactly I could be so much better (for which I would agree with you).

Meanwhile, I'm off to finish a Casper van Dien film where I can sigh and then imagine him and Ian Somerhalder and Joseph Morgan and all the other actors that haunt my dreams in swimming shorts, and them all just hanging out. _YES._

I hope you have such a fine time as well. Also, if you want a crappy sequel, say so. In a review. That involves typing one up. Hint hint, wink wink, nudge freaking nudge.

I love you all, random people I do not know! :)

ALSO, the song playing on Damon's iPod is _fix you_ by coldplay. Yes, it's cheesy and overdone. But I think it fit Tyler and Caroline's relationship. They healed each other (though I've never been quite sure what Tyler did to help Caroline other than giving her that impressively _fine_ body of his) and they loved each other and I think that might have been their song. I don't know. They both seem like the top forty type. What confuses the hell out of me is why my muse thinks Damon would have bought it on his iPod for her. Oh, hell, it's probably a song he bought when he was feeling mopey over Katherine or Rose or Elena or something. I don't honestly care, my muse made it up so you can blame my muse and not me. :D


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